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Things I’d Like to Know About Why Exam Scripts Turn Out As They Do

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  • Is the high level of risk-aversion we keep seeing related to candidates’ anticipated future prospects? (‘Pedestrian’ is the word one of the senior staff has been kicking around for the past couple of years; ‘workmanlike’ tends to be mine. It’s not outright flawed work, but it’s targetting adequacy when many candidates could be showing more evidence of actually doing some philosophy.)

  • Were the same people consistently risk-averse during the various stages of their schooldays?

  • Are the reasons predominantly psychological (fear of failure, lack of confidence...) or strategic (based on expected returns)?

  • Are the people who apparently haven’t grasped that there is writing an essay (in general), and then there is writing a philosophy essay, genuinely unaware of it (despite the feedback we provide for termly essays), or hoping to do well enough without undergoing the transition?

  • Are they, perhaps, just following what was drummed into them in their schooldays?

  • Why, every year, are there people who think adding birth and death dates after the names of canonical philosophers is a worthwhile use of exam time?







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